Kristin’s Furnace

Kristin is a single mom & teacher with a 7 yr old daughter. Her world fell apart in December when her furnace quit working along with her car. The stress of her boyfriend Joe battling cancer and trying to remodel a “fixer upper” home she purchased was taking it’s toll on her. She called several contractors to come giver her an estimate of the cost to get the furnace working again. Each one that came out told her the same thing, that the chimney was blocked so she would have to get a new high efficiency furnace and replace her hot water heater that also exhausted thru the “now blocked” chimney. None of them ever returned with a quote…

Trying to keep the pipes from freezing she was running several electric heaters, with the constant fear of burning down the house. She and her little girl Mary had to stay with friends and family at night, and another friend loaned her a car.

The great guys from “Full Throttle” took a look at her car but it was too far gone and too expensive to fix.

Faith Works got the call for the furnace and one of our contractor members, Keith Howard from “Universal Temperature Engineering” in Oxford, responded the next day. Keith was able to get the furnace working to keep the pipes warm but needed to return the next morning to do a full safety inspection. So one more night at friends for Kristin and Mary. After installing a new igniter, a back flow sensor cleaning the combustion chamber and checking the chimney, the furnace was back in operation the next day. A new exhaust pipe was installed for the furnace, the ducts were sealed at the joints and temporary filters were added. A replacement is planned for the spring, but for now Kristin and Mary are safe and warm… Thank you so much Keith…!!! (see pictures and comments below)

Before and after… the old furnace was installed improperly and needed extra air flow. Notice the small inlet inside the big box (this is too small for the furnace size). The front panel was removed and a filter assembly was added to provide extra airflow into the furnace for now. Notice this is a “Michigan Basement” the walls are stacked river stone. The floors were vacuumed and several pounds of dirt were removed, keeping the area around the furnace clear and clean.

The old exhaust pipe was completely rusted through and venting into the basement as well as up the chimney. A new single length of pipe was installed from the furnace directly to the chimney inlet.

After pulling the old exhaust pipe out and inspecting the inlet and chimney stack you can see that it is quite clear all the way up…!! Now all the gasses are going where they should, up the chimney.

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About Us

We are a Christian group of men, women and young adults (high school & college) from the Greater Metro Detroit area who serve God by volunteering to assist people in need. We gather together, in the name of Jesus, to support one another while we support those less fortunate in the communities in which we live.